


Sine Spe Recuperandi (Impossible to Recover)

by vetiverite



Series: To Drown In You [2]
Category: Desperate Romantics, Siren (1996 Short Film)
Genre: Aidan Turner is Rossetti, Backstory, Dean O'Gorman is Siren, Developing Relationship, Drowning, Frottage, Infatuation, Light Angst, M/M, Mermaids, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Pining, Seduction, Siren Culture, Sirenkind, Sirens, Supernatural Elements, Water Spirit, merfolk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-14 19:15:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28800435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vetiverite/pseuds/vetiverite
Summary: The life of a siren-- before, during, and after the love that profoundly alters it forever.
Relationships: Dante Gabriel Rossetti/Siren
Series: To Drown In You [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2111613
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	Sine Spe Recuperandi (Impossible to Recover)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Suxr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suxr/gifts).



> A companion piece for [To Drown In You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27063220), told from the siren's P.O.V. You don't have to read them in order, but it helps.
> 
> Dedicated to Sugarsu (Suxr) and inspired by her beautiful artworks [here](https://sugarsu.tumblr.com/post/634687999904497664/flow-it-show-it-more-sketches-for-you-always) and [here](https://sugarsu.tumblr.com/post/634052723163234304/for-flow-it-show-it-thank-you-for-your). UPDATE: And [HERE!](https://sugarsu.tumblr.com/post/640564107730386944/sine-spa-recuperandi-impossible-to-recover)
> 
> In 1855, Dante Gabriel Rossetti hand-copied out his original 1847 draft version of "The Blessed Damozel" as a gift for Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. This document, now part of the Pierpoint Morgan Library Collection in New York, can be viewed [here](http://www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/1-1847.morgms.rad.html).
> 
> In maritime law, _"sine spe recuperandi"_ refers to goods that (however they came to be lost in the water) cannot be recovered. Here, it refers to the siren's heart, which he has given away to Rossetti.

> _Den Schiffer im kleinen Schiffe  
>  Ergreift es mit wildem Weh;  
>  Er schaut nicht die Felsenriffe,  
>  Er schaut nur hinauf in die Höh.  
>  Ich glaube, die Wellen verschlingen  
>  Am Ende Schiffer und Kahn;  
>  Und das hat mit ihrem Singen  
>  Die Lorelei getan._
> 
> The skipper in the little ship  
>  Clings to it with wild woe;  
>  He looks not at the rocky reefs,  
>  But gazes up from down below.  
>  Methinks the breakers will devour  
>  Both boat and boatman in the end;  
>  And such a fate the siren’s singing  
>  Brings about as she intends.
> 
> \--Heinrich Heine, “Die Lorelei”, 1823

The law of mortal men is this: if it was cast away, recover it. If it went down with the ship, return it. If it’s marked with a buoy, leave it. If it lies abandoned, claim it.

The law of sirenkind is this: _if you can get away with it, take it._

__________ 

He started small, with shells. Cockles, tellins, periwinkles. _Only empty ones,_ his mother told him. _Do not rob a living creature of its home._

He kept them in a secret place, heaped in a huge rainbow abalone shell given him by one of the merfolk. He’d taken a childish shine to her and haunted her favorite kelp bed until she caught him peeking. Instead of devouring him – he’d have thoroughly deserved it – she only gave the little siren a light tail-lashing and the abalone as a souvenir.

It was very precious to him, that shell. He visited its secret hiding-place every time he had a new treasure to place in it. It made him feel rich, like an ancient sea-king guarding his hoard of gold.

__________ 

His first out-and-out theft was a lowly crab trap. It took some doing to distract its owner, who cursed colorfully as he watched his property be towed out to sea. It returned days later, in pieces.

The siren then turned his attention to fishing nets. A single slash from a coral blade was enough to free all their prisoners. Called upon to explain himself, he said, _For every net I cut, the landfolk take in six others. They can lose just this one._

 _A loss has a cost,_ the eldest of elders sternly observed. _That netful might have fed a family. They will now die from having nothing to eat._

 _They will die someday anyway,_ he replied with the ruthless severity of youth.

The eldest frowned. _These words are not your words. They belong to the merfolk, who are not our kin. They lure ships for sport and quarrel over the spoils. They drag landfolk off jetties and pick their bones clean in the shallows. You spend too much time around them. Their company has made you callous._

He taunted them with sweet laughter, proclaiming, _I care not._

But before they could devise a suitable remedy for his waywardness, the sea took over his teaching.

He’d just liberated a narwhal from a harpoon line, tugging a screaming sailor overboard in the process. Finding the sea too rough for rescue, the crew of the whaling boat escaped down the long trough of a wave, leaving their shipmate behind.

Normally, the siren would have simply swum away, qualm-free. But the cries of distress audible over the wind awakened something strange, even painful, within his immortal breast. Half the fingers of one hand severed by his own line, the abandoned seaman had no hope of treading water long. Drawn by the tang of blood in the water, sharks would soon circle. The man would be devoured alive.

 _I did this to him,_ the siren realized. _I must finish it._

Without further hesitation, he dove deep, came up under the sailor, and dragged him down.

At first the drowning man thrashed violently; he could not accept his fate. The siren held on, determined to make him understand that this was the best and only conclusion. He stared deep into the man’s bloodshot eyes and gently stroked his cheek, but it was not enough. How to ease mortal suffering? How?

He threw his arms around the drowning man and held him tight.

At last the sailor ceased to struggle. He writhed just a tiny bit as the saltwater invaded his lungs, and then he was still. When the siren withdrew, he saw that the man’s expression – once distorted by fear – had grown peaceful, even grateful.

He had helped another one escape the net.

__________ 

_Come with us,_ his parents said.

 _Where are we going?_ he replied.

_Ask no questions. Only come._

A great vessel had gone down in the northern sea. The fruits of shipwreck were ripe for harvest by any who would make the journey. To the siren’s surprise, he and his kin were beaten there by a contingent of rowdy merrows, who jeered and lashed the water with their supple, eel-like tails. The elders met these displays of aggression with equanimity. 

_We did not sing this ship to sleep,_ the siren’s mother whispered in his ear. _We have no right to its cargo._

_Then why are we here? Why did we come?_

_Watch and see._

While the merfolk went straight for the treasure – _greedy things!_ – the sirens tended to the sailors left clinging to the wreckage. They would not last long in these frigid waters. They needed help to drown more comfortably, to pass with grace from life to death and from surface to deep.

The young siren watched as his kin paired themselves off with the hapless mariners. One caught his eye: a mere lad, choking with terror as he struggled to hold on to a floating splinter of mainmast.

 _Go to him,_ urged the elders. _He will be glad of you._

In their natural element, sirens are platinum-pale tinged with blue, an alarming sight to human eyes. Indeed, the boy looked frightened at his counterpart’s approach. But he smiled when the siren smiled, and he allowed his hands to be taken. The first barrier had been crossed.

As the cold water began to exact its toll, the siren sang a tender tune to allay the boy’s fear of drowning. He sang about his shell collection, about narwhals and northern lights; he sang about the peace of letting go and the journey ahead. _This way,_ he sang. _This way._

Having already dispatched their own humans to the deep, the sirens gathered at a respectful distance to watch their young kinsman. Even the mermaids paused in their plundering to give witness to his work.

It took a long time, for the lad was young and strong, but at last he was ready to be taken under. He smiled one final time and let himself be pulled down, down, down…

_This way, this way._

Later – after the sea-floor scavengers had done their work – the siren returned for the boy’s skull. A tiny octopus had taken up residence in it. He carried them home together.

__________ 

Among sirenkind, mercy goes hand-in-hand with cruelty. The two qualities balance each other. One can save a soul one day, then damn it the next. That’s the way the tide flows. Why swim against it?

The siren had proven he could end a human’s suffering. Now he must be taught how to cause it. 

__________ 

The initiation rite took place on the new moon. All of the young ones congregated in the great basalt cave on the north shore, their people’s primordial gathering-place. Here, their parents bedecked them with shells and drew spirals of luminescent algae on their skin. 

_At first glimpse of night sail, we sing,_ they told their children. _The humans aboard will not be able to help themselves. They will turn toward us. The rocky shoal will catch them, and then the god will gorge._

_Do we first help the sailors to die?_

_No. If the god wants its meat fresh and still struggling, we cannot interfere. It is the dark side of our duty—and the mariners’ as well. They struck a deal with the water. Now the fee must be paid._

A ship sacrifice is a momentous night for all. The acolytes trembled with awe at the magnitude of the task laid before them, but their fear enfolded a powerful joy: for the first time in their lives, they would set foot on dry land. Used to moving gracefully in water, they wavered awkwardly on the steep path to the promontory. But they learned fast, and soon they leapt from boulder to boulder with confidence.

A harmonic drone rose up to the black moonless sky. The singing had begun.

Sirens sing for three purposes: to entice, to emancipate, to ensnare. The first song is for seduction. The second is for mercy. The third and most treacherous song is a song of destruction—sung not out of malice, but in devotion to an ancient glutton god.

But songs are double-edged blades. The musician is as likely to be cut as the listener. On that night, the sailors’ hopeless screams flayed the young siren’s mind, and he knew that the god he served had devoured something within him, too. Innocence. Selfishness. Conceit.

Afterward – pride burning in their eyes – his parents awarded him with a branch of red coral. _You’ve come of age,_ they told him. _Sing always in harmony with our ancestors._

From that moment, he shunned the company of the merfolk. What did they know of sacrifice?

__________ 

There remained one song for the siren to learn—neither the hardest nor the holiest, but surely the most agreeable. He had done well in his trials, the elders thought— so well that victory in the next contest seemed inevitable.

They began to school him in the art of enticement.

 _Our kind have lured landfolk for as long as there’s been land,_ the elders told him. _They hunger for us, and we lose nothing in giving them what they want. But our play serves a purpose. We plant within their breasts a desire for the sea and a dread of it as well. Enough of one to keep them bringing us treasure; enough of the other to keep them from becoming a nuisance._

 _We want them to come_ , _but not to stay,_ the siren’s mother added.

First he learned to warm his blood. _Landfolk prefer their own for lovers,_ the elders said. _They will favor you better if you act and look and feel like them._ To that end they sent him to bask in the sun—first afloat on the glittering surface of the ocean, then upon a flat-topped rock on a remote shore. 

He had to admit the task was very pleasant. A heavy-limbed drowsiness snared him every time, proving addictive to he who had never slept. Also fascinating was the skin-change from cold white to tawny pink, from scale-roughened to slippery-smooth. He found he liked to touch as well as look. Stroking his palms over every inch of his sun-warmed self, he discovered many pleasures, some more intense than others.

Much, _much_ more intense.

 _He’s catching on,_ the elders smiled.

Naturally, the time he spent lolling on the rock helped to sweeten his song. His hums, moans, and sighs of pleasure drifted landward, attracting the odd human to the beach. Hidden from their sight, he observed them closely—how they moved, spoke, acted when together, or when alone. He mouthed their words and aped their gestures, just as the elders bade. It would all serve a purpose in the future.

Other, more curious things drew the siren’s attention. Sometimes humans did on the beach below what he did on his rock high above. He found it at once comical and puzzling to watch. What was the _matter_ with them?

 _They wear so many layers, they get lost,_ he told his siblings. _You should see them fumble! And then once they find themselves underneath all that cloth, they rush toward the end as if they only want to get it over with. They don’t know how to slow down, to feel pleasure._

He did. He savored himself beneath the sun, drew it out to degrees that humans would no doubt find shocking. But what did _they_ know? _Their_ measly climaxes lasted seconds; his lasted hours. Afterward, his movements in the water had a tell-tale languor obvious to all. 

He never thought to hide it. Only landfolk did that.

 _His_ folk nurtured great hopes for their beautiful golden one. Even the merfolk began to court him with gifts—pearls, amber, precious moonstones for his hair. These the young siren handed them off to his parents. He could not cherish them as he did his _real_ treasures—the abalone, the branch of coral, the sailor boy’s skull. 

He was waiting for something. 

Perhaps it, too, was waiting for him.

__________ 

First came the woman who collected fossils from the cliffs. With her stout boots and basket of strange tools, she stirred up great curiosity but very little fear.

Every morning she took her constitutional on the jetty that beckoned to the horizon like a giant’s curled finger. The siren lay in wait for her at its very tip. Having long ago comprehended the nature of his kind, she knew better than to let him near—though sometimes she spoke to him in a brisk, friendly manner, accepting the fact that he had no language to frame a verbal reply.

After meeting the woman daily for almost a month, the siren hid one morning to see how she’d act when suddenly, inexplicably deprived of his presence. The answer: no different. She came and went with the same air of untroubled purpose. Clearly she was not the type to pine.

It piqued the siren to think that his quarry did not even miss him. Vanity wounded, he never went back.

__________ 

Second was a dark-haired maiden, lissome and sure-footed despite the yards of fabric swaddling her from throat to ankle. Upon her head she wore a fluted pink disk that tied under her chin with rippling pale green ribbons. The siren very much coveted one of those. He came as close to the shore as he dared—and she as close to the water. Their fingertips brushed; startled, both pulled back— then inched forward again. 

To his surprise, she kissed him first. Then again, and again—each kiss hungrier than its predecessor. But it was no use: their desire was thwarted by her prison of silk.

She would visit twice more: once to tearfully toss a wreath to him, tiny white flowers that wilted in the salt water; then again one year later, babe in arms and top-hatted spouse looming at her elbow. The ardor in her eyes had cooled into disdain; she seemed to wish to make it clear that _she_ had done nothing to regret. 

Neither had the siren. Their tryst was soon forgotten, but for several moons afterward, the youngest sirens took to tying pink scallop shells to their heads with long strands of kelp.

__________ 

His third was an grizzled old mariner who said, _No ye don’t, my lad. I had one of yer kind when I was in the Azores, and I’ll not try it again._

Gruff though his words seemed, the gaffer’s tone was caressing. He let the siren stroke his long, silvery beard once and then gently grasped his wrists to take his hands away. Then he took a little briar pipe out of his coat and pressed it into his strange suitor’s hands. 

_I know ye must have your trophy or you won’t go,_ he grumbled. _So take this for your bubble-blowing and leave us old ones be._

__________ 

Then ( _finally!)_ came success with a caulker’s mate of the Royal Navy, handsome and curly-haired, ashore on a twenty-four-hour liberty pass. As the siren sucked him off on the moonlit beach, the man made a half-hearted show of fretting about what his wife would think. But as pleasure took over, he soon enough abandoned that act. His cock was thicker than it was long, with a prominent knob at the tip and a smoothness very pleasing to the tongue. He spent copiously, and his come tasted like fresh oysters and seafoam, salty and invigorating.

 _Was fucking brilliant, tha’ was,_ the caulker panted. Then – wife evidently forgotten – he urged his oddly silent companion down flat on his back and returned the favor. 

So intense was the pleasure of a mouth enveloping him, the siren soon found himself with legs spread wide, moaning and scrabbling up big handsful of sand. The caulker’s tongue swirled around and around him down to the very root, summoning a climax unlike any other, keen and crystalline.

After his companion had staggered off, the siren found a gift laid upon the sand: a walrus carven of ivory with little pegs for tusks. Lovingly rubbed smooth, it lay neatly in the dip of his palm as if expressly created for that destination.

He put it with his other treasures. It was his best one, until the yellow scarf.

__________ 

It isn’t antipathy that steels sirens’ hearts against landfolk, though there is a measure of selfishness that drives them to don that armor. Hardness, after all, protects weak spots. Centuries of experience have taught sirenkind the pain that comes of growing too attached. 

Landfolk are so short-lived.

Being young, the siren had yet to cool his temperament. He tried to cultivate the proper reserve but continually found his own passions breaking down the very walls he meant to fortify. His parents reassured him that this was quite natural. In time, they said, his blood would run as cold as the elders’.

But then came the yellow silk scarf.

__________

 _Why did you allow it?_ the siren’s mother upbraided him.

 _I made a mistake,_ he replied miserably from deep within a bed of bladderwrack.

Wound around him, the stolen strip of bright yellow silk felt less like a trophy now than a token of catastrophe. Within its bondage, his entire body felt hot and disjointed; yet he would not lift a finger to remove it. Why bother? Even without it, everyone would know just by looking _._

 _You should have ducked out of sight,_ the scolding continued.

 _I did!_ he half-lied, for he’d only half-ducked, powerless to do more. _Hypnotized by a human!_ Not once had the elders ever mentioned the possibility of such a thing! Yet he knew he could not lay blame elsewhere but on himself.

First, he ought not to have swum so close to the sea-arch. He could have kept to the rocks on its far side, hidden from view. Second, he ought to have read the weather. Though the day began bright, a conspiracy of clouds milled far out to sea. Without sunlight, he should have known he’d not be able to change fast enough from his sea-dwelling form. Worst of all, he’d been cocky. He thought he could not be spotted, which is one step away from being caught.

 _You hide now when you should have hid then._ His mother’s voice cut like sharkskin. _Come out._

 _No_.

 _Child, you’re not the first to be speared by a look! With more practice, you’ll find yourself less susceptible._ His mother sighed a flood of silver bubbles. _Find the dark-haired one again. Give him back his scarf and take away his heart. You’ll feel much better, and all will be as it should._

He believed her all the way up until he stood quivering in the dark-haired man’s arms.

__________ 

Of the stranger’s three names, one proved kindest to the siren’s tongue. 

Inhale the first syllable through your teeth like a fast-gathering north-sea swell. Then breathe the rest out slow and gentle like a wave lavishing a southern shore.

_(hhhhrrrroohhhssssehhhttiii)_

You don’t need to know what a name means, if it sounds like your own home.

__________ 

_Come and find me again_. 

No longer his own master, the siren obeyed. At dawn and dusk, by sunlight and by starlight, whenever Rossetti crested the ridge overlooking the beach, he found his mysterious friend waiting.

Though their time together would be limited – Rossetti confessed as much on their second meeting – they refused to hurry. Perhaps they thought that by delaying their own union, they could prevent its eventual sundering.

__________ 

At first, they only kissed; no more—but enough to leave them weak. On sun-warmed sand they lay together, bodies pressed close, utterly absorbed in their mouths’ duet. Whenever they came up for air – a necessity naturally felt more by the land-dwelling half of the pair – they lost their breath again over one another. 

Rossetti was yet young and unskilled; his clumsy ardor freed a half-buried tenderness within the surprised siren’s breast. He had never felt this emotion for any of the landfolk with whom he had dallied—not one. The closest he’d ever come was when he guided the sailor boy to the ocean floor, and even then…

Before he could grow melancholy, he pulled Rossetti’s mouth down to his. Had he ever tasted an apple or honey from the comb, he might have said that Rossetti tasted like these. Instead, so far as he knew, it was the other way around—and he hungered for them.

__________ 

_What is your family like?_ Rossetti inquired one afternoon on the beach, during a break from kissing. _Your mother and father, the ones who made you?_

The siren understood but, lacking words to describe his clan, resorted to other means. Leaping up, he dashed down to the strand to select pebbles— two large and fourteen small – lining them up in a neat row before Rossetti’s amused eyes.

 _A large tribe, I see!_ the young land-dweller chuckled. _Which one is you?_

The siren mulled it over for a minute, then unwove a large, flawless pink pearl-drop from his hair. It had once hung as a pendant from a long strand of smaller round pearls found tangled in the tentacles of a rather put-out sea anemone. He placed it fifth from last, between two duller round granite pebbles.

 _Unique, you are,_ Rossetti teased him. _Your family’s own treasure. They must love you very much._

A puzzled, curious glance was the sole reply. 

Rossetti bit his lip, then reached to rearrange all of the pebbles in a close circle with the pearl in the center. He rubbed his palm in a circle against his chest, saying, _Love._

The siren’s ducked head and bashful grin told him that his meaning had been received.

__________ 

> The blessed damsel leaned against  
>  The silver bar of Heaven—

_Do you think ‘gold’ would be better than ‘silver’?_ Rossetti interrupted his own recitation. _I imagine heaven to be more of a silvery hue, but something about it doesn’t seem quite right. Neither does ‘damsel’ – I could change it to ‘damozel’, which would be more medieval – but then neither it nor ‘gold’ will scan. Thoughts?_

The siren shrugged. He’d seen landfolk do this when they didn’t know something, and he copied it now. The human words he’d learned for Rossetti’s sake were few but salient: _yes, good, there, more, now._ But he did not wish to speak; he only wanted his lover to continue in that deep resonant voice:

> Her eyes knew more of rest and shade  
>  Than a deep water, even—  
>  She had three lilies in her hand  
>  And the stars in the hair were seven—

_You see, she’s IN heaven, and so they’ve arrayed her like an angel. Do you know what an angel is?_

Again, the siren shook his head.

Rossetti smiled and drew the tip of his finger along the curve of his companion’s jaw. _You are, I think._

__________ 

Several days in, March weather reasserted itself; the ocean’s spray stung like needles, and a blanket of grey clouds covered the whole of the sky. Without sunlight, the siren feared he would not be able to make the transformation. Surely Rossetti would recoil from him. But a miraculous thing happened: the minute he laid eyes on his lover, a surge of heat flared within him, and all in a flash – to both his and Rossetti’s astonished delight – _he changed_.

 _Look at you!_ Rossetti crowed. _Look at you!_ And his wide, dazzling smile brought an even deeper blush to the siren’s skin. 

Or was it the realization that the sun in the sky was not the only light?

__________ 

Even when the weather was fine, one feat could never be accomplished: getting Rossetti into the sea.

 _It’s not that I wouldn’t, if I could,_ he declared, digging in his heels against the siren’s playful attempt to tug him towards the water. _If I thought I_ belonged _there. But I just…_

The siren loosed his grasp and listened hard.

 _There’s water on land, you see,_ Rossetti explained _. Rivers and lakes and their smaller cousins, streams and ponds. Many of the fellows at school went swimming or boating; their parents had the inclination to teach them. But I never learned to do either. I’ve kept to the shallows._ He touched the siren’s chin gently to show that his reluctance did not amount to distrust. _Your home is grand, but it’s far bigger than I’m used to. It frightens me, but you do not. Will you be my ocean instead, and may I be your land?_

This gave the siren a notion that turned out to be a fine one indeed.

__________ 

As Rossetti gingerly picked his way up the slope, the siren bounded ahead, looked back, bounded ahead and looked back again, like a little goat eager to show off its high-mountain perch. How puzzling that a land-dweller would have such difficulty climbing! Even Rossetti seemed to feel so. Disheveled and out of breath, he sat down on a boulder all of a sudden, yanked off his boots and stockings, and recommenced the climb barefoot.

When they reached their destination, Rossetti could not have been more charmed. _You_ do _sun yourselves on rocks, just as in the fables!_ So proclaiming, he shrugged off his overcoat and gallantly spread it out on the rock so that it would accommodate them both.

To rid Rossetti of his clothing took the same kind of playful tugging as had the attempt to get him into the water— only not as much of it, for he was quite willing to be stripped. The resulting vision had the same effect on the siren as his own spontaneous change had had on Rossetti: joy, pure joy. To each, dark and light, his lover was an unexpected glory, eliciting awe and gratitude. 

That day they lay together in the shimmering midday heat, bodies at last making contact, rubbing together skin to skin. Now the siren learned that not all landfolk wish to get things over with quickly. He and his lover rutted against each other without any sense of shame or haste, and they came within seconds of one another, mingling their seed between their trembling bodies.

 _Mio dolce innamorato,_ Rossetti murmured against the siren’s arched throat. _My sweet lover._

To one who had never been given a name, such a prize was different – more glowing, more precious – than any hoarded trinket. And though his kind did not normally speak in words, the siren could not restrain himself.

_Mmm… mmmmMY… hhrrossehhttiiii…_

__________ 

_When will you next see him, your dark-haired one?_

The other sirens only meant to tease. Accustomed to the landfolk being fodder for gossip, they found their young kinsman’s silence on the subject unnatural. They hoped to goad him into breaking it by pretending to be sympathetic. 

To their astonishment, he did speak—and what he had to say left them in a state of troubled wonder. 

Above water, sirens rarely use their voices for anything but singing; below, they speak with their hands and faces. Their friend’s expression was peaceful, even cheerful as he gestured slowly against the weight of the water, _When doesn’t matter. I’m with him all the time, even now, here with you._

 _He must bring you tremendous pleasure,_ another motioned. She used the sign for sexual release, but one withering glance put a halt to further lewdness. 

_He brings me a pleasure I will never know again when he is gone,_ the siren said. _And I will never want to._

Dismayed, his companions glanced around at one another. _You’d better be careful,_ one ventured. _He’ll break your heart._

 _I already know he will._ As he spoke, the siren tilted his face up to the glimmering silver ceiling which marked the water’s surface and the sky beyond. _I am prepared for it to happen._

_Why don’t you stop it before it does?_

_I don’t want to._ An alien, savage emotion flickered across the siren’s face, lifted to the light. _I want to feel his hook in my flesh._

Soon enough, that very hook sank in.

__________ 

It had occurred to the siren that he had received much but shared little. Determined to remedy this imbalance, he brought his treasures to the rock one mellow morning, arraying them carefully so that Rossetti would see them them as soon as he set foot upon the high platform. 

And Rossetti did— only to stop cold, his horror-stricken gaze fixed on the sailor boy’s skull. 

_Where did you get that?_ he cried.

At first the siren did not comprehend. These were his most special possessions, dazzling and exquisite to behold. He expected amazement, not… this, whatever it was. He took his partner by the wrist and tried to pull him closer, but Rossetti twisted free. _How did you come by it?_ _Did you… did you KILL this person?_

The siren knew that ugly, snarling tone. Bull seals made it when you came too close, pulling back their muzzles to show their sharp teeth. He also knew that look of betrayal; he’d seen it in mariners’ eyes at the epiphany that death was in the water. Confused, he froze; it took every particle of self-will not to seize his treasures and escape to the sea below.

Instead, he decided to stay and make himself understood. 

Kneeling by the boy’s skull, he began to tell the story with his hands. One became the waves, rolling and pitching wildly; the other became the sailor boy, barely staying afloat. To make certain Rossetti understood, the siren touched the skull, then alternately clenched and flexed his fingers in imitation of the terrified boy’s labored breathing. He touched his own chest with the other hand, then made it flow sinuously to the first hand’s side. It soothingly stroked and cradled its twin, which then grew quiet, its fingers closing softly around the other’s thumb in acquiescence and trust. 

Like a feather drifting lazily on a puff of air, the two entwined hands then floated down, down, down, to the siren’s lap. He let them rest there a moment, and then – in a sudden passion of love and grief – seized the skull and pressed it fervently against his heart.

When he opened his eyes – he’d not realized he had closed them – he saw tears in Rossetti’s, not of blame but of empathy. 

_You didn’t kill,_ Rossetti whispered. He came forward and cast himself to his knees, laying his hands on the siren’s bare shoulders. _You didn’t kill. You… eased. Why do the legends never say this?_

Little did he realize the seed he’d planted, or how it would take root.

__________ 

The new moon had wheeled around again; another ship-sacrifice was due. This time, a tempest of unprecedented power approached. The sirens would hardly have to open their mouths to draw a vessel towards land; the wind would do all the work for them. 

But the god expected them to sing, and so they must. _All_ of them.

_What do you mean, you cannot?_

The anger emblazoned across the face of the siren’s father could have set the sea to boiling. His mother, by contrast, could have frozen it pole to pole with her disappointment and contempt.

 _The singing is what separates us from the merfolk,_ she hissed at her disobedient son. _Shall you join their ranks, to be a thief and a scofflaw? Is that what you want?_

 _I want not to kill,_ he replied, more mournful than defiant. _I want to ease. Only that._

 _Only that? Impossible!_ his father thundered. _The god must eat, and to feed it is our sacred charge!_

_The god will have all it wants. It doesn’t need my help._

_Blasphemy!_

The siren’s brothers and sisters – who had gathered around him just as Rossetti envisioned, like pebbles around a pearl – rushed to his defense. _He asks not to be exempted from duty,_ one argued. _To lead a doomed sailor to rest is a worthy task. It, too, is sacred— and far more difficult than singing a ship to sleep._

 _Those who are ill are not expected to sing,_ another declared with a dose of mischief. _And if our brother isn’t sick with_ something _, well, there’s no such thing as sickness at all._

 _On that we agree,_ their mother replied, her voice scraping like sharp coral. _Perhaps it’s not the merfolk I fear, but another to whom he gives his time._

She did not have to add _And gives himself,_ for everyone present knew the nature of his malady.

 _Fear not,_ the siren’s eldest sibling later reassured him. She had taken him to ride the swells at a distance from their still-disgruntled parents. The coming tempest pushed the water high, with deep troughs between. A ship full of seamen would find such conditions worrisome to an extreme, but sirenfolk take it in stride.

 _We all of us understand, even Mother and Father_ , she continued. _It’s not as if they never cut their teeth on human love. It is love, is it not?_

In answer, the siren dove deep to hide his face.

Yes, he loved. It was time to admit it in full: Rossetti’s hook had pierced him deep. But the truth did not cause him misery, as he’d expected. Even in the midst of the ocean’s wild pitch and roll, he experienced an abiding calm. He loved, he loved, he loved.

It was only when all his folk gathered to go that he felt desolate. They bade him stay behind, but in such a way that showed they no longer understood him. They might tolerate him, but only as a cipher to puzzle over. The only one who knew his heart now was a being not of his world, a mortal who would fade and die in time. Against his own wishes, his will, his choice, he would someday be alone. 

_Perhaps I already am,_ he thought. Then, and only then, did he believe he could not bear it.

_________ 

In the most famous story ever written about a mermaid, every step that said creature took on human legs pained her as though she walked on razorblades. Not so for the siren as he strode through the village in the lashing midnight rain. Bare feet that have known sharp rock are insensible to cobblestones; what hurt was his heart.

Had any of the townsfolk chanced to look out their storm-battered windows, what a sight would have met their eyes! A beautiful youth – utterly bare except for a long, yellow scarf wound around him – padding past, trailing the fingers of his right hand along the rain-slick stone wall. He seemed preoccupied, and so he was: he knew he must find Rossetti.

Sailors navigate by the stars, but creatures of the sea follow a different guide. Traveling through the pitchblack night, the young siren found himself relying the very same inner sense that informed him every time Rossetti neared their trysting-place. Did a similar sense reside within Rossetti? Was he already waiting, impatient for the sight of his one?

The wall ended. Now the siren had only the inner sense to navigate by, and it did not let him down. Just shy of a furlong up the lane, the pangs grew more insistent, causing him to stumble and slow. To his right stood a low barrier of white sticks lashed together in a row. An opening in them swung fitfully back and forth in the wind; hesitant, he walked through it to see what would happen.

Before him stretched what seemed to his eye to be a meadow of rippling seagrass, at whose far end stood a large, boxy structure like those he’d passed on the lane. At first he’d taken them for a fleet of oddly square ships moored high on the coast. He wondered if the storm would wash them all away, but they appeared to be well-anchored in the earth, not even bobbing up and down. This one glowed white like a limestone cliff in the moonlight. Dark windows like indifferent eyes dotted its face. Gripped with longing, he stared up at them, powerless to look away.

Suddenly a light flared in one of the upper windows, briefly setting it aglow. It wavered and seemed to die out, but then reappeared in one of the lower windows. A portal opened, and there stood Rossetti, swathed in white from throat to foot. He ventured out onto the ledge that jutted out of the cottage’s chalky face, positioning himself on its edge like a diver gauging the drop of a cliff.

And then he leapt, and his footsteps pounded down the slate walkway, and the siren felt himself captured.

__________ 

Nothing more could trouble him. 

Not the strangeness of being inside a human dwelling, shadowy and full of concealed treasure. 

Not the tiny fire – surely alive – that Rossetti carried on a brass dish. 

Not the strange cliff they climbed ( _They’re called stairs, they lead to where I sleep,_ explained Rossetti) or the dim golden cave at its summit. 

Not the bed – inexpressibly alien to him for all that it was soft and yielding – onto which he found himself gently pressed. For then Rossetti was beside him, pulling what resembled a layer of cloud up to cover them completely. He twisted to extinguish the little flame, and then all was warm, and all was dark, and tender hands touched the siren, and there was no fear anywhere.

__________ 

> When round his head the aureole clings  
>  And he is clothed in white,  
>  I’ll take his hand and go with him  
>  To the deep wells of light,  
>  And we will step down as to a stream  
>  And bathe there in God’s sight.
> 
> We two will stand beside that shrine,  
>  Occult, withheld, untrod,  
>  Whose lamps are stirred continually  
>  With prayers sent up to God;  
>  And see our own prayers, granted, melt  
>  Each like a little cloud.
> 
> We two will lie i’ the shadow of  
>  That mystic living tree  
>  Within whose secret growth the Dove  
>  Is sometimes felt to be,  
>  While every leaf that His plumes touch  
>  Saith His name audibly.
> 
> And I myself will teach to him—  
>  I myself, lying so, —  
>  The songs I sing here, which his voice  
>  Shall pause in, hushed and slow,  
>  And find some knowledge at each pause,  
>  Or some new thing to know.

__________ 

_This is the lad I told you about,_ said Dante. _The mysterious swimmer I saw down at the cove—remember?_

 _Oh, yes. I remember_ , said Mrs. Randall.

She doubted the siren remembered her. She’d only been a child then, nothing worthy of special notice. His kind – as sailors’ wives might say – have bigger fish to fry. Her older sister Letty learned this to her cost. But Letty’s siren could not have this one-- not unless his hunting grounds extended as far as Margate. No, he was most definitely the siren that Mrs. Randall – then ten years of age – had seen from the spit at Hengisbury Head. Same golden hair; same bow-shaped lips, although back then they had been quite blue....

 _He found my yellow necktie, you see. When he came last night to the door to return it, I invited him to shelter here for the night,_ Dante cheerfully lied. _I could not in good conscience send him back out into the storm—you understand, surely, Mrs. Randall._

She understood perfectly, though the knowledge jarred her. Bundled up in two thick shawls – a third wrapped around the basket to keep its contents hot – she had so blithely picked her way across the cobbles in the drear, cold rain, never imagining for an instant that anyone but Dante would answer her knock upon the door…

Her present expression closely resembled that which she had worn to recite the Cogden Mermaid myth on Dante’s second night in the cottage. In other words, a careful blank— one even more carefully mirrored by the interloper half-hiding behind her young tenant, dressed in clothes far too large to be his own.

 _Whom do I have the pleasure of welcoming to Spring Cottage?_ she inquired coldly.

Dante – not the stranger – answered. _Sal. His name is Sal._

Foolish child. He thought she would not recognize the Latin for _salt_.

 _Well, Sal,_ she smiled at the siren. _I hope you may be comfortable for the duration of your stay. They say this weather will last into tomorrow. I would not imagine you’d want to go down to the water any sooner than that._

The siren’s fingers stretched out to pluck at Dante’s. He looked uneasy. _Caught_ , in fact. But Dante, intrepid soul, responded with ebullient ease. _If you are agreeable with the idea, I would like him to stay,_ he told his landlady, taking the siren’s hand outright.

She sighed. _Then I will bring a larger basket for supper. Would you like me to launder your necktie? A small amount of white vinegar will vanquish all seawater stains._

 _That would be brilliant, thank you!_ Beaming, Dante dashed up the stairs, leaving Mrs. Randall and the siren alone with the dining table between them.

 _You had better not hurt him,_ she hissed. 

To see tears well up in those ancient sea-blue eyes was the very last thing she expected.

__________ 

At every new moon in the years to come, Mrs. Randall found occasion to go for a walk at dusk. Bonnet neatly tied, shawl flung around her shoulders, she meandered down the coastal road to the Durdle Door. There she sat on a favorite boulder and watched pink mackerel clouds skid across the deepening heavens. Only when the last of the light died away did she begin to speak aloud.

 _I know that you saved that child at Camber Sands,_ she’d say. _And the two boys dragged in their dinghy by the riptide at Chesil. Their parents are most grateful, as is the wife of the fisherman in Torquay, who is recuperating nicely._

Silence.

Taking this as a prompt, Mrs. Randall then ceremoniously extracted Dante’s latest letter from her pocket and read it aloud. _He is well,_ she would tell her unseen audience. _He wants me to tell you he dreams of you._ Or sometimes, _He has not been so well of late, but he does not want you to worry._ And always, _He sends his love._

She never laid eyes on the siren, herself. But every year, on a certain anniversary, she found a gift waiting on her favorite sitting-rock. A branch of coral. An abalone shell. And once - on a long, long strand of green sea-grass - a large, flawless, teardrop-shaped pink pearl.


End file.
